How Much Does Our Social Safety Net Cost? $742 Billion a Year and Rising

CNBC.Com ^ | September 2, 2015 | Eric Pianin

[BradtotheBone]

With roughly a sixth of the U.S. population living in poverty and many more struggling to stay out of it, the federal social safety net has evolved in recent years into an extraordinarily costly and wide-ranging assortment of spending and tax measures.

A new study by the Government Accountability Office provides a detailed inventory of federal welfare and social service programs identified 82 federal programs and assorted tax expenditures totaling $742 billion in fiscal 2013, the latest data available. An estimated 106 million people living in the U.S. – or about a third of the overall population – received benefits the previous year from at least one of eight programs for low income and very poor families that came in for special review by the GAO. Some of these programs are available to illegal immigrants.

With so much money at stake at a time of continued congressional concern about spending levels, these programs are certain to be scrutinized by the Republican-controlled Congress in the run-up to a new fiscal year on October 1. GOP leaders have already targeted many of these programs for cuts in the coming years, as they push for further sharp reductions in the deficit.

[PGR88]

Progressive/Left government paid for with unbacked, printed currency, massive debt and manipulated interest rates - in sum, a centrally-planned money supply.

Progressive/Left government would be absolutely impossible with a hard currency. Conservatives will lose as long as the Left has the WMD of printed fiat money in its arsenal.

[citizen]

Dang!! 1/3 of everybody is on taxpayer funded benefits!
It’s like that oriental fella, Sum Ting Wong....

[ConservaTexan]

“Safety Web” seems more accurate. Once caught, escape is extremely difficult.

[Mr. K]

I am getting to hate this term “living in poverty”

More like “living in an easy chair, suckling the public teat”

Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams (both brilliant) once told a story:

If God said to you that you are destined to be poor your whole life, but I will let you choose which country to be poor in... which would you choose?

Those ‘living in poverty’ would be considered living luxury to someone from Africa.

The “War on Poverty” has done nothing but produce more and more “poor people” willing to accept handouts all their life

[utford]

We would be fortunate if they were just living in an easy chair.

Unfortunately, those that are on the public dole do other things - including a large amount of procreating. We then subsidize their offspring, who then grow up and generate more dependence on the public. The problem grows exponentially, and this is called “compassion”

[Buckeye McFrog]

Amazing when you consider that Obamacare was the ONLY new program that Obama was able to pass.

All the rest of it comes from playing fast and loose with the rules on existing programs (SNAP, Obamaphones, SSI, etc.)

Good lesson in there for the Right.

[DannyTN]

We need jobs. The social safety net is going to keep costing us more an more if we keep letting our jobs go overseas.

Trump has the solution. The others don’t get it. The others want more free trade agreements with low wage high unemployment countries.

[PGalt]

Socialism Is Legal Plunder

The Results of Legal Plunder -

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

/Bastiat

/socialist schemes

DEFUND socialist collectives, foreign and domestic. Pick 1 or 10 or 100 or 1000. DEPOPULATE socialists from the body politic. Pick 1 or 10 or 100 or 535.

It’s easy to…

live - free - republic

[brivette]

and his brother Wee Tu Low...

[Will88]

We need jobs. The social safety net is going to keep costing us more an more if we keep letting our jobs go overseas.

And also if we continue allowing high legal and illegal immigration which drives down earnings of most all lower and middle class American citizens. Pay in the US needs to find its natural level at US living standards, not Third World standards. Otherwise, we'll continue seeing large numbers of workers who still qualify for many means tested, gov't poverty programs.

All so-called 'savings' of bad trade deals and cheap labor from excessive immigration are paid for in full through government poverty programs, paid for by present and future tax payers.

[Will88]

To give some perspective to the overall cost, the $742 billion annual figure represents nearly a third of the $2.4 trillion in total federal revenue that was collected in fiscal 2013 – and it doesn't include the annual cost of Social Security or Medicare. GAO said the 2013 spending total was even higher if you counted four other tax provisions geared to helping low-income families and individuals, as well as the non-refundable portion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Those provisions taken together drained the Treasury by $14 billion a year in foregone federal tax revenue.

Does not include Social Security and Medicare, and I don't think it includes the state portion of Medicaid, which pushes the cost of poverty programs to well over a trillion per years.

[TBP]

This HAS to be brought under control and somehow reduced. Otherwise, it will go bankrupt and pull the rest down with it.

Not that the liberal-progressives care.

[LambSlave]

Compassion is only possible for an individual conscience expressing freewill; e.g. the person, or as part of the church. The word you are looking for is “theft”. The taking is from the productive and giving to the non-achievers. In the past we were a nation of self-reliance— you found a niche or you perished, now we are rapidly becoming a nation of idiots and bums.

[Pres Raygun]

State governments spend an additional $250 billion making the total welfare bill $1T. Divide that number by the 100 million people who receives any benefits, results in $10,000 per person. That's $40 K for a family of 4, none of which is taxed. That is just slightly below the median family income. Something has gone horribly wrong.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

“Safety” net. LOL. I guess they mean that you can safely sit on your ass and watch TV all day and have the government pay for your apartment, food, medical care and give you a couple bucks for booze and drugs too.

[DannyTN]

"All so-called 'savings' of bad trade deals and cheap labor from excessive immigration are paid for in full through government poverty programs, paid for by present and future tax payers."

Exactly. The price of those cheap imports don't include the costs to government to support the unemployed workers and the opportunity costs of lost wages, or even the taxes that would have been paid by a domestic producer. But those are all costs that the taxpayer ends up having to pay.

[DannyTN]

"All so-called 'savings' of bad trade deals and cheap labor from excessive immigration are paid for in full through government poverty programs, paid for by present and future tax payers."

Exactly. The price of those cheap imports don't include the costs to government to support the unemployed workers and the opportunity costs of lost wages, or even the taxes that would have been paid by a domestic producer. But those are all costs that the taxpayer ends up having to pay.

[Restless]

My wife works at a local ministry, and she sees it all. There’s an 18-year-old high school senior who already gets disability because he’s from a broken family and is considered a little “slow” (even though he’s not in special classes in school and does well in regular classes). There’s the single mom who brags about all of the “freebies” she gets - welfare, food stamps, Pell Grant for college, Section 8 housing, utility assistance, Medicaid, Obamaphone, etc. She used to work a part-time job at a convenience store, but as she put it, “Why work when you get all of this stuff for free?”

[Will88]

But those are all costs that the taxpayer ends up having to pay.

I've heard Trump tie it all together once of twice, but he needs so get it down cold and turn it into his overall policy to Make America Great Again. Maybe he will as he issues more written policy statements.